1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an automatic telephone call distribution network, or automatic call distributor and, more particularly, to an automatic call distributor with a plurality of subnetwork switches respectively connected with different internal subnetwork groups of telephonic agent units with associated display terminals for displaying customer information stored in a single host computer.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 C.F.R. .sctn.1.97-1.99
Automatic call distributors employing subnetwork switches for selectively interconnecting customer calls from units of an external telephonic network with a plurality of agent units of internal subnetworks of the call distributor are well known. Examples of such call distributor systems are shown in patent application U.S. Pat. No. 5,268,903 of Jones et al. entitled "Multichannel Telephonic Switching Network With Different Signaling Formats and Connect/PBX Treatment Selectable For Each Channel", issued Dec. 7, 1993; U.S. Pat. No. 5,140,611 of Jones et al. entitled "Pulse Modulated Self-Clocking and Self-Synchronizing Data Transmission and Method for a Telephonic Communication Switching System", issued Aug. 18, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No 5,127,004 of Lenihan et al. entitled "Tone and Announcement Message Code Generator for a Telephonic Switching System and Method", issued Jun. 30, 1992. It is also known in such automatic call distributors having more than one subnetwork switch to utilize a common, remote, host database computer for data communication between the subnetwork switches of the distributor. Disadvantageously, however, in such known automatic call distributors the host computer is not able to determine the origination of a telephone call that is transferred from an agent of one subnetwork switch to an agent of another subnetwork switch. Consequently, it is not possible in such distributor to make intersubnetwork transfers of customer information when calls are transferred between subnetworks.
Instead, in known automatic call distributors, each time there is a transfer to an agent in another subnetwork other than the one which originally received the call, the stored customer information cannot be accessed by the new agent and the new agent must therefore duplicate the information gathering process. In such a system, a customer call from an external, customer telephonic unit is received on a trunk of a subnetwork switch, and the call is transferred by the subnetwork switch to an agent at an agent telephonic unit of the associated subnetwork. Information gathered by the agent about the customer is typed into a temporary memory at the display terminal associated with the agent unit for viewing on a CRT or other display and then transferred to and stored in the host data base computer.
If the agent cannot adequately service the customer call, the agent will transfer the call to another agent to assist the customer. If the call is transferred to an agent unit of a subnetwork different than that of the transferring agent, when the call is connected to the other agent, the host computer determines the port at which the other agent is connected. There is not, however, any storage in the data base of the host computer of the identity of the trunk line or the subnetwork switch to which the originally received customer call was connected and, thus, the identity of which agent originally serviced the call. Consequently, the host computer cannot transfer the originally gathered customer information stored in its common data base for display at the CRT terminal of the new agent servicing the call at the other subnetwork.
Thus, adequately servicing the customer requires the new agent in the other subnetwork to again ask the customer many of the same information gathering questions (i.e. customer name, address, account number, etc.) as previously asked by the agent who originally received the call. This disadvantageously results in a much longer time to fully service a customer call and annoyance of the customer for being required to repeatedly answer the same information gathering questions over again.